Swimming pool. Part 1

 I have a passion for climbing all kinds of abandoned places, especially old Soviet infrastructure elements. I visited almost everything in my city that I could visit. I even went to Pripyat with the same "crazy ones" (there is a photo of me standing against the backdrop of that very amusement park, I am very proud of it). But the real fear caught up with me not in the ghost town, but where my passion for stalking began - on the land of my relatives, in a village near Kharkov. My aunt married a Ukrainian man. He had an apartment in the city and a house in the village where his mother lived. Every summer, my parents took my sister and me to a sunny village to Baba Tanya. There I met my friend Denis (he got me hooked on stalking). Denis and I explored all the local bomb shelters and basements, and once we even took away a bunch of gas masks from some basement.

About a month ago, Denis wrote to me that enthusiasts had discovered a protected pioneer camp from the time of Brezhnev, untouched by civilization, near their city. Naturally, I was all fired up, bought a hospital certificate from a doctor and went to Kharkov. I'll leave out the details of the trip, and in the end, Denis and I are already standing at the entrance to the complex. A gym invaded by fungus and ruin, an empty swimming pool lined with broken tiles with black mold, school classrooms with dilapidated blackboards and portraits of Lenin, broken windows, notebooks scattered along the corridors — how I love all this... I took a bunch of great photos that day.

My favorite moment in stalking is when I pick the basement lock and dig through all sorts of drawers (once I found a box with an AKM—74 in one factory; I kept one Kalash for myself, the rest was sold). It all started when Denis and I were sawing the lock into the basement with a circular saw the next day. I do not know what they thought in the past, when they left piles of army first—aid kits with very interesting contents in the pioneer camps — in general, I collected a whole bag of drugs, and then I wanted to take a last picture in the destroyed pool against the background of the poster "Communism is the youth of the world, and it should be built young!" I've remembered this phrase for the rest of my life).

When I opened the shabby blue door, I saw the corpse of a naked girl hanging over the pool against the background of that poster. I was scared, but I didn't panic (stalkers often deal with the corpses of homeless people or victims of banditry). We got closer, and then it started. There was a metal collar around the girl's throat, which was attached to a chain. The chain was attached to a hook for a spotlight. All this was done at the height of the fourth floor. Nothing was hanging there yesterday. I just can't imagine how it got there — how could you climb to the 4th floor of the gym without the help of a huge ladder and hang yourself from a long heavy black chain, hanging it on a hook, where the spotlight was yesterday? At that moment, it hadn't sunk in yet, so I decided to take a picture of this girl against the background of the poster. She was young (no more than 20 years old), well-built with hair the color of tar. I took my camera out of my pocket and was about to take a picture when the chain snapped.

The corpse fell to the tile, making a nasty sound in which bones could be heard cracking. You can't imagine how terrified I was. Before, Denis stood and timidly looked at the suspended corpse, but now he just began to cry. And I—I don't even know what came over me-I decided to get closer to the girl. The broken body was lying at the bottom of the pool. The girl's face was beautiful and correct, I even felt sorry that she decided to hang herself. I looked at her for a couple of seconds, and it seemed to me that she wiggled the tip of her toe. Seeing this, Denis squatted down and sobbed even harder. I ran to the door and tried the handle, but it wouldn't open! Turning around, I saw the corpse get up and approach Denis. He stopped crying. I started shouting at him, but he didn't even turn around. They stood face to face. I called Denis again, but again he did not respond. The absurdity of the situation was simply maddening.